BackTrack, an Ubuntu-based penetration-testing distribution, offers "major improvements" over previous releases, including support for 32- and 64-bit architectures, KDE 4, Gnome, and Fluxbox.

Based on Ubuntu Lucid LTS and kernel 2.6.38, the new BackTrack is fully open source and GPL-compliant.

"Perhaps most importantly BackTrack 5 'revolution' will be our first release to include full source code in its repositories," says a March update on the BackTrack blog. "This is a big thing for us, as it officially joins us to the open-source community and clears up any licensing issues which were present in BackTrack 4."

Tutorials on the site explain how users can download and install BackTrack, or boot it from a Live DVD or thumbdrive.

Related content

This issue’s DVD comes with the BackTrack 5 R1 [1][2][3] pen test distribution. BackTrack provides a great collection of pen testing and security auditing tools. You can boot into BackTrack Live from the DVD or install BackTrack permanently on your hard disk.